


nocturne

by elysing



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M, Metaverse (Persona 5), Taking Liberties With Lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24717070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elysing/pseuds/elysing
Summary: Music's a guise, a casual science, private at best. And yet.In the bowels of Shido's palace, Akechi forms an unlikely connection with his pianist(s) and mourns those he never had.
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Akechi Goro's Mother, Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro & Original Female Character(s), Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	nocturne

Shido’s Palace doesn’t surprise Goro, with its padded velvets, faux mahogany, and assumed sense of importance. Each time he enters its opulence grows, the girth of its ever expansive dining hall not unlike that of the man himself. Buttons never rest easy clasped around his neck as he builds muscle upon ambition; in the same way, as an entitled child, his unconscious populates his Lego cruise liner with more and more plebeians. 

What is puzzling, then, are the pianos at the restaurant’s stage, unassuming upright tools that loop the same melody like wind-up boxes. Goro Akechi has no education in music beyond the facile handbells and singalongs of tryhard foster homes. Goro is trained — self-trained — in sophistication, not in the classical. A princely guise demands at least the ability to differentiate the facile elevator sort from the truly ‘tasteful’, and there is a curious, unpretentious charm in the music Shido’s cognitions sip at lobster bisque to. 

Goro, who even in his black mask has won a membership and VIP access and free breakfasts and a suite, tolerates the _intimacy_ of being within Shido’s desires as only a detective can with the pungence of bodily evidence. It’s even something he can almost understand, the adults’ glass-world empty as the words and smiles he has taught himself, its cocktail conversations making ample practice for real-world pretensions. So the pianos are doubly vexing — it’s not possible, not fair, that in this sickening sunset there exists a place, a piece, to make him stop to listen. 

That, of every new cause for hatred he finds, expectant, there is one that doesn’t quite fit. 

  
  


*

  
  


Goro keeps returning to the ship as one obsessed, taking some private satisfaction in lounging where Shido is most vulnerable and has no idea, in counting the new rooms and wings as he steals along walls and takes out fresh Shadows. The more there is of everything, the greater the fall he can orchestrate. There isn’t anything on this vessel that he would mind watching slipping into a titanic oblivion one day, except maybe the piano which thrums out a melody so gently lilting that he cannot believe it of Shido. 

Soon it is almost routine, each time he comes, for him to spend a few minutes dawdling at a lone table in the restaurant, keeping a distance from the tables with blue flowers. Even with his entitlements he has to be careful. 

But perhaps the music is a clue. A clue to what, he doesn’t know. He’s not interested in Shido’s humanity, even less in his own. It’s an excuse he makes to himself as he approaches the pianists on one of these occasions and studies without feeling what he can observe of their features. It doesn’t surprise him that one is a facsimile of the other. Shido-san’s extravagance in trophy-making extends even to this: two, for good measure. 

Late thirties, early forties, he guesses, from the deepening lines around her mouth. Her hair is pulled back by a clip of false pearls. Her mask glitters under the lights as she turns to him. 

“Well, hello there.”

The final bars of the song linger between them. It is accompanied by brief and polite applause, as much a part of the music box act as the piece itself. None of the other cognitions have ever glanced this way and never will. “And who might your parents be?”

Her smile is more nervous than he would have expected from a performer; it tells him more than he counted on knowing about idealised sycophants. It is also kindly, questioning, as she looks his attire up and down. She assumes she knows a thing or two about lost boys then. 

“How funny you are,” he responds. “We know each other well.” 

“Oh, Akechi-kun!” 

Goro gives his standard chuckle, his mask lifted for her recognition; as expected, she knows, too of his fabled other-self, the one that really lives here. “I suppose we can’t expect much of a cognition’s observational skills when she’s written in only eighty-eight keys. Can we?” 

As usual these implications don’t reach most of them. It’s a game he used to play with the guests aboard the ship, prodding and testing to see if they might break from existential thoughts. But they’re only as complex as Shido thinks them, after all. 

“I’m not used to seeing you in this getup! I would’ve recognized you from afar if you were in your school uniform.” 

“Of course you would have.” He smiles, pleasant as ever. “Do you take requests?” 

He names the typical Chopin fare, in vogue as always, some Mika Nakashima debuts he thinks women her age would’ve enjoyed from senior high, and she smiles and nods and together with her double across the room plays the same old damnable piece each time. 

“Is this one of Shido-san’s favorite songs?” he asks at length, after the fourth or so try. 

“I suppose so… yes. Why would I be playing it, otherwise?”

“How did you come to know it?” 

“It’s mine, my dear. Possibly I improvised it from some old tune I knew… when someone like Shido-san approaches a humble hired pianist for a fresh piece in his name, can you say no?”

The smile she now wears is familiar. Is it because it’s the same one he spends long months attempting to perfect before a mirror, vacant, tugged up like a tic? Goro isn’t smiling now himself, as he watches her face and the swell of memory before it is backhanded by the very nature of her own construction. She herself is a looping background track, destined to repeat the exhilaration of a single night of recognition, not the fallout of whatever liaison came after. 

“What a night. What a man,” she utters, momentarily unconscious of his presence, and Goro, finger on his gun, wonders if death might do her more justice. 

  
  


*

  
  


Goro has made such a disguise of the objective pursuit of truth that it is possible, even, to mask from himself the intent of his investigations. The two parts of himself that play at chess: one which schemes and runs background checks on Akira Kurusu for ‘future use’, the other which seeks his attentions, his company, for sessions at the jazz club or fruitless searching sprees through record stores. The latter has been winning ever since what it let slip at the bathhouse. The latter is conscious of Kurusu examining him as he moves through the aisles and stacks, looking for a female face while lo-fi chords play from overhead. 

Somehow, he’s letting Kurusu make the connections, _see,_ and it’s not a feeling he wants to scrub off his skin — the way he does whenever a fan approaches him to profess a mutual connection with the Jazz Jin.

“What about the discount section?” Kurusu interjects at one point. It’s curious how the steadiness of his frame _beckons,_ even though with his slouch and hands-in-pockets he is doing anything but. Goro sighs, steps away from the ‘Piano’ section, and follows him to a huddle of CD cases two-feet deep, their surfaces already streaked by careless fingernails. 

“It’s not exactly important.” Goro smiles a false apology as his hands dive in. “I just _hate_ letting things go without finding out what they are.” 

“As I’m well aware.” 

Goro glances up to meet the meaningful gaze. He’s made no pretense of his _fascination_ with the staunch but oh-so-harmless supporter of the Phantom Thieves. All the better to kill him with: a mantra he repeats to himself each day. “Adding one more to the list: you’re a discount aunty.”

“You caught me.” There’s a quiet smirk. “People shouldn’t have to pay too much for good things. Unless they’re trying to keep others from having them.” 

Oh, but Goro knows what that’s all about. He doesn’t claim any space outside of his apartment or the Metaverse, because it's an emotional investment he has no use for. It’s why whatever humble country-boy Kurusu is implying tightens the smile he wears. 

“Unless I’m very mistaken, you’ve been taking your friends to the jazz club, too.” And they wouldn’t know alto from tenor. Or blues from jazz - poor justification for a hefty door price. 

“Only _one_ friend at a time,” Kurusu corrects him wryly. “It’s sad repayment if our antics end up soiling your good standing with Muhen.”

“That’s hardly something to be concerned about!” Goro breathes a chuckle he doesn’t feel. “It's a simple place for music that puts our minds at ease. That’s all.” 

Kurusu has been sifting through the pile as well, pushing his glasses further up his nose as he goes, helping to stack those they’ve already looked over to one side. They’re almost three-quarters of the way through and Goro’s just about ready to give up when Kurusu’s fingers brush his — and hands it over, smiling, _Kaba Ayano: Nocturnes._ The pianist is in last decade’s make-up, her mouth unmistakable, the eyes revealed and older than he thought they might be. Slapped right across the chipped upper right corner is a discount so generous an elementary schooler’s pocket money could’ve bought it. 

“This too, right?” Akira’s gaze is knowing. “You going to lend me this after you enjoy it?” 

“As I said. It’s for a case,” Goro says easily. “Thanks.” 

Back at his apartment, later, Goro lies on his back and runs the entire CD through the room, listening for familiar chords among the gentle tinklings, progressions that mightn’t be simply lost forever in a stray memory in the Metaverse. He thinks of Akira. He thinks of his mother, the phantom world of song she stuck into her ears in her final days, the way they looked with a twirl of hair tucked behind them. 

The piece isn’t on the album. And Goro’s almost relieved. What’s only real in one world should stay where it belongs.

  
  


*

  
  


It doesn’t take long for Goro to find out that Kaba Ayano is on the cusp of forty, that she had a record deal under a label that supplied mainly to restaurants, that she had settled for something stabler years ago. Pre-school education. On the pretext of yet another case, he pays a visit to the neighborhood she teaches in and, sipping at coffee on a bench, listens to strains of piano drifting in on the breeze. To the high and grating voices that accompany them. Watches them file out from kindergarten in streams of nonsense chatter before slipping their hands into the longer ones of fawning mummies and daddies. Off into the sunset they go, heigh-ho.

Goro pockets the finished coffee and begins walking, as has Kaba Ayano. Kaba-san is alone, and walks with shoulders set so stiffly they resemble, after all, the two golden pianos on Shido's stage. At the traffic junction, when Shido's face lights up on billboards, she averts her gaze. 

It's all the proof he needs. 

  
  


*

  
  


Goro returns to the ship more and more often.

The irony of it being a luxury cruise is not lost on him, although _for_ him it is anything but. Goro treads the carpets and burns their embroidered patterns into his mind like a brand. He fills his vision with the gaudy gold of sun and bannister until it blurs over and he spits, shuddering, over the side of the deck. His body becomes fuel for his resolve, a Trojan of hatred that he builds as meticulously as his cases. 

Because it is easier here than outside of it. Because no one can hear him break down through the safe rooms on the ship. Because, in emptied-out moments, he can sit and stare in his corner of the restaurant while the piano creates a warm sea around the edges of his mind, and kill without blinking any Shadow who thinks to ask him about the empty table, the stillness, the look on his unmasked face. 

He cocks his gun at the next set of footsteps that approaches, not even glancing up, already relishing the force of pulling the trigger and its recoil, how identical it feels to killing someone in the real world. Now that he knows.

Near him there is the sharp intake of breath from a woman whose voice he knows better than anyone else’s here, and slowly he lowers his hand. 

“Akechi-kun?” 

“Shouldn’t you be at your post, Kaba-san?” 

Kaba-san manages a nervous smile and nods over at her double, still seated at one of the pianos, who right on cue picks up the melody again. 

She sits, for some reason. For a few moments there’s silence between them, and here, here alone of all places, Goro is under no obligation to make talk. Irritation settles in like a fist in his throat. Music, music like this, is not to be shared. Music is to be picked up as a casual science, affected through reading materials more available to children like him than middle-class expenditure on tutors and violins. Music shouldn’t touch him, invade where it’s least expected. It’s private at best. And yet. 

And yet. He allowed Kurusu Akira in. 

“To see you come by so often… you’re a more sentimental boy than most of the ones here. Aren’t you?” 

“You’re quite mistaken. They must be the sentimental ones if they can stand to listen to the only song you know on repeat for fucking forever.” 

“I’m sorry?”

“Bravo.” He’s laughing, suddenly, in spite of himself, the sound so harsh Kaba-san is wincing. “That's all I wanted to say.”

“You should bring a friend.” She’s still trying. “Or get your fans to come listen. It gets a little lonely down here. Doesn’t it?”

He looks at her. “Even for you?” 

“You see, Shido-san is a busy man. You didn’t have a falling out with him, did you? Shido -” 

“With all due respect, Kaba-san, I’d appreciate never hearing that name again. Your real self would be the same, I believe.” 

Her mouth opens in puzzlement, closes again. There is as always the frown of lesser cognitions prevented from fully understanding themselves. In his current state, though, it’s no longer satisfying to watch. Only tiring. If he killed one of Kaba, would the other still go on, playing its unappreciated nostalgia until the end of Shido’s eternity? 

Even toying with the notion repulses him. Goro pushes his chair back and stands. 

“What did you do out there, Akechi-kun?” she asks, and he starts. The music has stopped for the moment, like a train between stations, doors sliding open for a vessel as empty as his heart. 

“What else could I have done?” Nothing. And everything. 

For some reason they’re staring in his direction, all the unreal adults in this ridiculous restaurant… and he is a child after all, coming to in the wake of a lullaby to find the motherless world collapsed around his ears, shouting. 

  
  


*

  
  


The last time he enters the palace, he doesn’t take his time. Hurtles through Shadows, holds them at gun-point for information. He’s pulled hold-ups on the other areas but it’s clear, from how both Kabas are looking over their shoulders as they play in the restaurant, that they’re looking for him with something to tell. After all, he was ever their only audience. 

He approaches, long-nosed and red-beaked. Somehow they recognise him even in this version of himself — capable of learning, or…? 

“Is that what they’re making you wear on TV these days, Akechi-kun?” 

“Did you see them? People around my age… seven of them.” It’s painful to say it. “Plus one talking cat.” 

“I was going to tell you that. Your friends — they’re your friends, aren’t they? — they created some, ah, trouble. But it cleared up, and one of them in a long black coat came over.” 

Goro’s heart skips a beat.

“He... thanked me for my playing. He was quite pleasant, in spite of…” Kaba-san’s mouth twists in uncertainty. “He even thanked me for keeping _you_ company. And said you wouldn’t be coming again.”

Goro barely registers the hissing sound that comes from him then, arms clenched so tight they might fall off from sheer will alone if he had a say about it, or anything, in this bloated, misbegotten wet dream of a world. What does that piece of phantom shit even mean. Why should Kurusu Akira assume he's won. What the fuck does Kurusu Akira presume to know or understand about Akechi Goro. 

Why should he think he’s made a successful mockery of whatever music they shared, in the end.

Goro might as well be shot in the head. 

He swerves to leave — there is nothing more here — but Kaba-san catches his sleeve. It’s the first time they’ve made contact, he realises dully. 

“Akechi-kun. What’s going to happen? 

“They’re planning to sink this Palace, you know. Your stage. Your piano. Everything. The only _miserable_ universe you have. Your _song,”_ hers and his father’s, a song he ought to loathe, “is going down with it.” 

“But that’s impossible, right?”

Through the holes in her mask her eyes stare wide with blind faith. She is only a cognition, after all, a hollowed out version of a person grasping for a few moments left. Not unlike his mother’s last days, old ballads ticking time away between one man and the next, volume jacked up to max so that when he called she could not answer. Music: a safe room hanging tenuously between the real and the unreal. 

Not unlike him, after all. Because everything is trained on this vessel, everything in his life has made this its center, and this forgotten piece is the unprecedented soundtrack to his existence. He can’t see beyond whatever education Shido has promised him, much less that false horizon; his world is no larger than the perimeter of the Diet building, extends no further than the windows of his father’s office and the cutouts of a model city against his windows. 

How pathetic. 

“Don’t worry, Kaba-san,” he finally says, his voice tight enough to shatter. For a while there in the Jazz Jin he had dreamed as they did... If he explodes her head it’ll be the end of it. — “I won’t let it happen.” 

“Will you be alright?” 

— but he still can’t do it. 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ll see you later, Akechi-kun,” she calls familiarly after him as he slips away. He’s halfway to the engine room when the strains of faint piano finally fade away, leaving silence as his rightful inheritance. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Because 'Improvised Song Dedicated to the Next Prime Minister' is an underrated gem and we should all spend a few moments amused by its title, at the very least. 
> 
> New to this fandango. P5R ate my life.


End file.
